Forget the chocs and flowers - I want compost for Valentine's

The sky's been low and grey and spring seems a long way off. My lovely friend came to visit and brought me a tray of soil – nice!  She assured me it was full of hibiscus seeds she’d sown.  I put the tray on the window sill and each day I inspected it as I opened the kitchen blinds. 

Finally, last week a tiny seedling appeared! Bright, zingy and green, it filled me with hope and excitement.

I didn’t know much about hibiscus plants so I looked them up.  I discovered that the flowers are edible and that there are actually a whole lot of flowers you can eat.  

Nasturtiums, primroses, marigolds, violas, pansies - all look lovely in salads and fruit dishes, in soups and rice, in sweets, yogurt, cakes, biscuits, jelly.  And I see that hibiscus flowers look fab in the bottom of a flute filled with Champagne!

So, I'll be asking my Valentine to forget the bunch of flowers this year and buy me packet of Nasturtium seeds instead! And I’d rather have a bag of compost than a box of chocs - honest!

 

Planting seeds is a lovely, slow thing to do on a grey February day. Just push the seed into the compost, enjoy the smell of the damp earth and the anticipation of long summer days. Nature won't be hurried. But eventually, from that tiny seed a whole, flower-filled plant will grow and, in the case of nasturtiums, rampage all over your garden! But you'll get lovely peppery leaves and flowers for your salads and bees will bury themselves in the deep trumpets.  I love the way the buzzing reverberates when a bee is deep inside a flower and they come out covered in yellow pollen and almost too drunk to fly.

Tonight's tea?


 https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=764

http://theedibleflowershop.co.uk/
http://www.nonowenherbalist.co.uk/  (Fabulous workshops if you live in North Wales)

Plant It and They Will Come

In the recent RSPB magazine, Simon Barnes (author of the fantastic 'Bad Birdwatcher' series of books) wrote about The State of Nature Report. It's the work of 25 conservation organisations, a 'wildlife health check'. It said that two thirds of everything living is now declining. More than one in ten species are threatened with extinction in the UK. The document shows the decline clearly and incontrovertibly.

This morning I spent a dreamy half an hour watching 16 small tortoise shell butterflies feeding on the purple Buddleia. They were joined by a red admiral, two painted ladies and a peacock, not to mention several whites (I don't like to mention them, their caterpillars have decimated my cauliflowers, though they do dance beautifully together, like pale ballerinas).

I have some 'sea holly' plants (Eryngium species), blue as the summer sky, that are covered in bees and hover flies and the lavender bushes seem to buzz in the breeze.  

Bees and butterflies are struggling.  If we all planted a buddleia, some lavender, a few eryngiums, just think what a difference it would make.  And, if you've never spent time watching bees land on blooms, flit from one to the other, making that lovely, deep 'sound-of-summer' buzzing, then you've missed a treat.  You'll find your heart beat slows, your shoulders drop and the furrows fall from your brow. 

www.butterfly-conservation.org